Do you know, the most ignored must have quality for managers? It is not to re-invent wheels.
Have you ever tried to come up with your own solutions, which are already used by many? In business management, this refers as “reinventing the wheel.” Some examples include inventory control, sales lead management, employee hiring and cost control. This must have quality for entrepreneurs and managers is ignored, quite often
5 reasons why businesses need not re-invent wheels or rather finding solutions our own.
1. Why should we start from scratch, when others already practice proven methods? Let us learn from others, quick and easy.
2. It takes time, effort and money to reinvent. And develop your own solutions.
3. If you try to develop your own methods, the results and timeline are not pretty much assured.
4. Your most important assets are time and focus on business. And you’re losing it on tasks that are simple to complete. Better seek the help from the sources, who knows it.
5. Looking for solutions outside the company environment provides a lot of new exposure. But, while working for your own solutions, your thought process sticks to a limited space. So, you lose sight of the big picture.
Are you in business leadership, as owner or employee? Or a Practicing Manager, new manager or in any other leadership role? You must be always striving to meet your goals. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly?
Before reading further, stop. Take a pause, look backwards to the past years of work you have put in.
I have a point, categorize the work you had done during last few years, into five categories. All the five belong to must have quality for entrepreneurs and managers.
Innovation & Creation
You can list down all the initiatives taken from your side. Some of them would have given much more results than what you expected. Some others met the needs. And some were not so yielding.
Whatever done is good. Once again repeat. It’s time to create a new list and work.
Always be innovative and creative. This the ‘unique’ must have quality for entrepreneurs and managers to have. And it varies from individual to individual.
Decision Making
This is the area only you could act upon and is self explanatory.
But a reminder. Are you taking decision on behalf of your people? If so, try to move out of this habit. Not at once. Train your people in decision making. As and when they gear up, take a gradual exit. This must have quality for entrepreneurs and managers is ‘above all other skills. Known as delegation.
Leaving The Head Ache to Others
Now let’s write one more list…
Make a list of things which experts or professionals can manage. Quite a large operational or functional area can be well managed by them. And experts do it without any supervision.
(Functional area means, department like, Finance, HR, Marketing. And operational area means, sales, production, accounting). Owners should outsource jobs to experts. They manage with professional expertise, which is one of the benefits. And you save productive time for the work which need your focus. This must have quality for entrepreneurs and managers are the most ignored.
Things which we don’t have control
Explanation comes without describing. Keep all these out of your table. If you get someone who can handle, then well and good!
Reinventing the Wheel
What does it mean by “reinvent the wheel”? It is to finding solution for a problem which is already practiced by many others.
A large number of Entrepreneurs, Employees and Start-ups fall victim to ‘Reinventing Wheels’. Because they always fight problems to find ways to solve. So, to capture effective solutions, people spend a good deal of time. They keep on learning and implementing. Put it another way, people spend significant time and effort. If they move with impromptu decisions. Because impromptu decisions force you to manage by trial and error. (I am not against Trial-and-error method. It is really good, as it gives you lot of valuable learning and new findings. But in business, cost which we need to pay for trial and error is too high. That too for a not assured result).
At the beginning of this article, I asked you to look back the past years. Find yourself, how much you spent for trial and error. Not to Reinvent the Wheels means, we will adopt the proven process and methods from the experts.
Advantages are,
Experts knows the subject and they carry many years of experience.
Immediate and assured results available
They impart subject knowledge and professional skills to employees
Experts can suggest alternate solutions to the problems. They also identify hidden potential or problems within our business. That is the value addition. .
Who are the Experts?
Employees
During my stint as a CEO, I had a guy working in call centre as tele caller. Later on, from his resume, I realized that he was from accounts back ground. With good knowledge in accounting and billing tools. We gave an opportunity for him in revenue department as team lead. Deliverable was to manage billing, reconciliation and collection. He and team became productive from day one onwards. With zero input from my end.
Friend or colleague
Few years back, I did my consultancy business to first international client. I made business proposal with the expertise from one of my friends. He was into international trading and supply to large corporations. For him, developing new business proposal is an area of expertise. His spread of international expertise are, customer behaviour, negotiations, terms and conditions, and contract finalizing
Professionals
Like auditors, chartered accountants, quality specialists
New Hire
You can hire new employee with desired knowledge and skills.
Advantages are, immediate result, complete control, 100% commitment.
Only, but the big challenge is that you need to carry the person for long. It needs a cost
Consultants are professional with experience. And they work on specific projects or requirements. Consultancy used in business in different forms.
You seek the help of consultant as a coach. Through the coaching program, you or your team learn the skills and techniques.
Advantage is that cost and time required are minimal. Skill set of your team improve.
Flip side is that, this could end only as a training program. Desired results not sure to gain. Coaching done on general work environment, not specific to your business
Here consultant work within your business environment. Agreed upon the results or outcome of the project. Specific results are also defined.
Involvement of the expert and working deep with environment and people. Most of the time, consultants identify new possibilities or challenges. People may not know all these. Project based outcome assured.
Financial commitment seems to be high but will be much better than hiring an employee. This is most critical, when businesses need expertise at top management levels (CEO, Marketing Head, CFO etc.). You can bring in corporate skills and expertise to your company. Also, to limit spend, consultants are good.
Consultancy have a main challenge. That is the ‘involvement of key business people’ is a need for the success. It’s a combination of both consultant and business men make the results better.
Interim Executives work with companies for short periods of time (3-12 months) or on a part-time basis (2-3 days in a week). They bring corporate experience to the table. An interim executives acts as a mentor, mediator, fact finder, and implementer. Work with people, but execute and achieve bottom-line results.
Take charge of the entire management operations of the organization as well as the team. And they put the action plan into action. On completion of contract, built process and management control. At the end of project, built process and management control given to the designated individuals.
Scope of work are many. Annual operating plan, financials, cash flow, cost control, goals and reviews, inventory, sales, employee performance, HR practices, and statutory compliances. More focus areas included as needed by the business owner.
So, Interim services needed when organization seek immediate turn around. Meantime, companies don’t want to invest on top management for long.
Conclusion
Business men need to invest their time and effort on the growth and development. And where ever possible, for every proven process, make use of the expertise. This ensures immediate and assured results.
So, there is no need of Reinventing Wheels. Let’s work on innovations and keep inventing new areas.
